My opinion: Yukio Mishima doesn't fit into the "Dai-Nippon Gothic" aesthetic. Mishima's writing is suffused by sunlight and healthy, powerful bodies, symbolic opposites of what "gothic" makes us feel. Mishima's writing is the sea under blue skies and the Ise Grand Shrine. Gothic is disease, frail bodies, lightless spaces.
The difference is that Mishima was actually a fascist and believed it was beautiful, while the Dai-Nippon gothic aesthetic uses imperialist imagery as a form of grotesque violence, mixed up with disease and perversion. Mishima's view on death can shade into this but there's a disconnect because in the gothic aesthetic, it's an outsider's perspective on fascism. Fascism as excessive violence, extravagant criminality, a heterotopia where everyday morality is reversed.
It would be wrong to reduce "Dai-Nippon Gothic" to the restrictive label 'antifascist' but I don't think real fascism can mix coherently with the aesthetic.
Writers who the "Dai-Nippon" aesthetic would do well to appropriate --- Ranpo, Yumeno Kyūsaku, maybe Izumi Kyōka, definitely much of the work of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.
Of course, recontextualized images of Mishima can be appropriated but it's good to remember they're being twisted away from their original meaning
another potential aesthetic source of Yume Nikki: some of the stuff in graffiti world kind of resembles paintings by Taro Okamoto
this is a photo of Guarino Guarini's church, Santissima Annunziata dei Teatini, before it was destroyed by the Messina earthquake in 1908.
Because the image has colour, it's interesting to pretend it's current day but just blurry. It looks like something you could encounter in your daily life
everybody in WH is a villain
heathcliff is a villain but you also have to admit the racist, classist society kinda had it coming 🗿
worst popular statement about art is 'disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed' because that basically means 'art is a weapon to dominate my enemies and help people I like" which is truly evil
the disturbing aspect of art should be something everybody experiences but which turns out to be a good thing as well as a bad thing. Let's all get struck by it like ragdolls!
I like to ignore the 'didacticism' of Undertale because it doesn't actually make any sense as real ethics or as an integration of ethics into the game. The genocide run's preachiness is better interpreted as campy atmospheric decoration
like, im not gonna fault you if your prerogative is making the rpg equivalent of, like, a walking simulator or whatever--that's a perfectly viable ambition. but if youre willing & able to compose a genuine challenge for that game, i think it's strange & inadvisable to limit it to (what great effort is taken to remind the player is) the Worst Route. the eclectic didacticism of that route is at odds with its actual contents--like, if you're trying to make the (agreeable!) assertion that the completionist max-stats overleveling approach trivializes & monotonizes gameplay & challenge, you probably dont then want to lock the best parts of your game behind doing that, right??
If you like Dorohedoro I think you would like the novella "Yellow Mud Street" aka "Huangni Street" by Can Xue
Yellow Mud Street is more dreamlike and has less of a lucid story arc, but the immersive grossness and beauty of the world is quite similar. I am not finished reading it yet, but I think it would appeal to those who value that kind of powerful imagery and the view of society it connects to
We should base our aesthetics on this rather than making them conform to standards
worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.
A lot of people use art as a way to express emotions but I think it's important to not let emotional expression become just a new standard of authenticity. Express your feelings if you want to. You can also just make shapeless forms and that's okay too.
I didn't realize there were images of the fire happening.
I could say, "it's inevitable with wooden architecture." But maybe it's better to not make excuses and to feel the sense of loss
Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, burned down by a schizophrenic monk, 1950, it was rebuilt in 1955